ho, had he been asked the question,
would have declared himself ready to sacrifice his own life for the
advantage of that daughter, now compelled to work for her own bread.
To trace the career of Mary Adams in her new calling, would be to
repeat what I have said before. The more refined, the more informed
the governess, the more she suffers. Being with one whom she had known
in better days, made it even more hard to bend; yet she did her duty,
and _that_ is one of the highest privileges a woman can enjoy.

CHAPTER VI.

Leaving Mary for a moment, let us return to Repton. Here discord,
having once entered, was making sad ravages, and all were suffering
from it. It was but too true that the eldest of the Adamses had
deserted; his mother clinging with a parent's fondness to her
child, concealed him, and thus offended Charles Adams beyond all
reconciliation. The third lad, who was walking the London hospitals,
and exerting himself beyond his strength, was everything that a youth
could be; but his declining health was represented to his uncle, by
one of those whom his mother's pride had insulted, as a cloak for
indolence. In short, before another year had quite passed, the family
of the once rich and fashionable Dr. Adams had shared the fate of
all dependents--worn out the benevolence, or patience, or whatever it
really is, of their "best friends." Nor was this the only consequence
of the physician's neglect of a duty due alike to God and society; his
brother had really done so much for the bereaved family, as to give
what the world called "just grounds" to Mrs. Charles Adams's repeated
complaints, "that now her husband was ruining his industrious family
to keep the lazy widow of his spend-thrift brother and her favourite
children in idleness. Why could she not live upon the 'fine folk'
she was always throwing in her face?" The daughter, too, of whose
approaching union the fond father had been so proud, was now, like
her cousin whom she had wronged by her mean suspicions, deserted; the
match broken off after much bickering; one quarrel having brought on
another, until they separated by mutual consent. Her temper and her
health were both materially impaired; and her beauty was converted
into hardness and acidity.

Oh! how utterly groundless is the idea, that in our social state,
where one human being must so much depend upon another, any man,
neglecting his positive duties, can be called only "his own enemy."
What